Indeed I believe one of the greatest dangers the body of Christ faces today is the temptation to rethink and re-articulate the gospel in a way that makes its center something other than the death of Jesus on the cross in the place of sinners. (p. 102)
The above paragraph, from Gilbert's What is the Gospel? pretty much summarizes chapter 7: Keeping the Cross at the Center. A large bulk of the chapter is spent walking readers through three examples of false (or substitute) gospels. While Gilbert points out that each of these "gospels" may have some truth to it and may sound Biblical, in reality they are all essentially empty of the true gospel of Christ. In each example, he walks through what is good/true and then points out the shortfall of where the "bigger gospel" misses the target. I love what Gilbert is getting at in this section -- when you remove the cross of Christ from the center of the gospel (in both proclamation and in action), the "gospel" you come up with is basically fluff... nothing truly salvific. But even the face of sure rejection he said, "We preach Christ crucified" (1 Cor. 1:23). In fact, he resolved to "know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). That's because, as he put it at the end of the book, the fact that "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures" was not just important, and not even just very important. It was of "first importance" (1 Cor. 15:3). (p. 110)May we all do likewise.
For those of you reading along, we'll tackle the last chapter of this book next week!! :) For now, here are a few questions from this chapter to chew on:
- Which of the three false gospels did you find most interesting? Which one hit closest to home and why?
- How can we work toward keeping the cross of Christ truly at the center of our gospel (in both proclamation and action)?
- Are there any other verses from the Bible that come to your mind when you think about keeping the cross at the center?
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